


The Miracles of Walking on Earth

by Nagaina



Series: God Programs & Monsters [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: A Little Mythology In Your Technology, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Cybernetics, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Flashbacks, God programs, M/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, Other, Past Abuse, Past Relationship(s), Polyamory, So Much Stupid Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 13:54:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19465369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nagaina/pseuds/Nagaina
Summary: As Blackwatch 2.0 finally achieves momentum, Genji's time and deeds in the original incarnation catch up with them all, and old wounds are laid bare once again.----Follows from the ending of "The Affairs of Dragons". A side-fic bridging the time between AoD and its upcoming sequel, "The Awakening of Devils". Major character angst and snark ahead. You have been warned.





	The Miracles of Walking on Earth

**Author's Note:**

> The title takes inspiration from a quote, spoken by Thich Nhat Hahn: _“The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.”_

_Green Sky Gardens Co-Operative Arcology, 2076_

“We’ve got six new replies to the recall notice, Jess -- five from Overwatch’s backline support units, one from Blackwatch Analysis.” Nate routed the incoming to Jesse’s tablet. “Running security checks as we speak.”

“That brings us to what, twenty or so?” Jesse placed his coffee cup back down in its holder and rolled his chair to see the names floating on Nate’s holoscreen. He grinned at one. Pointed it out. “Ooh, there's Neil. That’ll make Beth happy.”

“Twenty-two in total. Most of the field agents active prior to Petras are playing it pretty cagey, for which I cannot actually blame them. Most of them have real lives again.” Wryly. “There’ve been a couple nibbles, looking for more information, but no solid hits yet.”

“More’n fair, since Reyes is the last name they took orders from, an’ I’m sure a few don’t want the risk of associations with me and my ridiculous bounty.” He mused over the list, and came to a decision he’d been turning about in his head for days. “Give ‘em whatever info you think is necessary, Nate. Saves time out of our day, and I trust your discretion.” He gave Nate a wry smile, as he leaned back in his chair. “My only other option is to put Gabe back on comms, and I don’t think anyone is ready for that yet.”

“Yeaaaaah, no. I mean, I live two doors down from the man, and _I’m_ only theoretically ready for it.” Nate’s smile grew a fraction wryer. “I’ll put together a secondary information packet and run it past you before I send it out.”

“Sounds good.” He rose, meandered over to the coffee pot and made them both fresh cups. He dropped Nate’s in the holder on his armrest, and returned to his own chair. “Been awhile since we really chatted, Nate. How’s it going? Y’all settlin’ in okay? Any requests to find your own housing? Different office? … More pillows?”

“Smartass.” Nate sipped his coffee, made an approving noise. “Beth has not complained of my pillow-theft but I kinda want to get us both some of those long, full-body ones to make up for absconding with most of hers. Otherwise? It’s good. I think this is _way_ better for her because, even though she’s working eighteen hours a day, it’s at a job she actually _likes_ with people she cares about.”

The fact that he had asked Nate about himself, and got a lot of answers about how Beth was doing instead did not escape Jesse, and he mulled over the notion of poking the invisible elephant in the room just a touch. “If you want her to snuggle with somethin’ at night,” he said, innocently, “you could always offer yourself. Seems y’all _both_ might sleep better for it.”

“My feet are always too cold, my ass is always too cold, and I’m only really snuggly under extreme emotional duress.” The corners of his mouth fixed in a not-really-a-smile smile. “Besides, Beth’s not into me like that.”

“I know you’re afraid to ask and see for yourself once and for all,” Jesse said gently, “but you miss all of the shots you don’t actually take, y’know. You’re definitely into Beth like that. Why not see where it goes?”

“Because there’s somebody here she _is_ into like that. Or at least _was_ and by all accounts he’s significantly less of an asshole than he was the last time we shared a Watchpoint together.” A deep, deliberate breath and another sip of his coffee.

He blinked. “After everything, you wanna set her up with _Genji?_ Nate… there’s all kinds of reasons why that’s a bad idea, the least of which bein’ you aren’t exactly an uninvolved party on _both_ those counts. Are you absolutely sure that’s what you wanna do? _”_

“I don’t want to _set them up_ \-- but I _do_ think they should at least _talk it out_ . I think it would be good for both of them to at least be _friends_ , which is something they _weren’t_ really, back in Geneva.” Softly. “And I _shouldn’t_ have been an involved party, then and probably not now, either.”

Jesse didn’t know what to say to him for a long moment, because nothing he was saying was technically _incorrect_ but the way he was saying it was oh so very wrong. “Nate,” he finally said, and cleared his throat. “Tell me, cos I’ve always been curious. How long’s this been going on with you? With them? And why haven’t you done anything to actually get what you _want?”_

“Well.” A quiet, more than a little self-mocking chuckle. “I suppose you _do_ have the right and responsibility to know. In Beth’s defense, she’s always kind of been the one to pick up sad-looking strays…”

**oOoOoOo**

_Watchpoint Geneva, 2062_

_For Nate, this is how it begins:_

The full spinal reconstruction was the sort of thing most people would only ever read about in science fiction novels: modular, so the whole thing wouldn’t have to be redone if any individual component failed, most of it subcutaneous, only the thinnest visible ridge of highly flexible alloys and polymers running from the sacrum to the base of his skull, where the cybernetics snaked up into his brain on linked nanomachine filaments, elegantly designed and executed so he didn’t look like a total freak, even with his head fully shaved from the surgery. He had to admit, it was pretty cool, and entire orders of magnitude better than spending the rest of his life quadriplegic, even given the price he was going to pay for it.

“Okay, one more set.” Also, too: the physical therapy staff was ridiculously easy to look at and he was privately convinced they were all grown in a vat in some cloning facility deep in the Swiss mountains, one dedicated to producing pragmatically identical fit, good-looking medical personnel without a single ounce of distracting personality among them.

The stretching exercises were… not awful, not great but could have been worse. Six months stuck in a medically induced coma and a full-body spinal immobilization rig was not the sort of thing to be just shrugged off. The muscle-strength building left him feeling like an overcooked noodle for hours after. The endurance training?

Now that was where Hell began.

“C’mon, Tsujimura,” J.M., the ridiculously beefy private torturer currently assigned to him cajoled as he gently, steadily, pushed on Nate’s shoulders in what he had been assured was the best way to regain some measure of spinal flexibility, though it currently felt a lot like what he imagined being compressed by a supersoldier would feel. “I know you got more in you. Reach for it like it kicked your puppy.”

“I --” Nate wheezed, “never -- had -- a -- puppy.”

“That’s a shame,” J.M. replied casually, granting him fleeting relief so he could inhale a lungful of oxygen. “I’m of the opinion that every kid should have a puppy. Water break?”

“Yes. God, yes. Please.” The spine, of course, flexed like a highly flexible flexing thing while every other muscle and joint in his body insisted that verticality was highly overrated and he could just slither across the floor of the therapy room like a slug. They mopped the floor every day, didn’t they? Maybe not. His palm skidded across the mat they were working on as he pushed himself to his feet, knees wobbling as he went. “Please tell me that water has some sugar and caffeine in it.”

“The water has some sugar and caffeine in it,” J.M. promptly replied, the filthy liar, with a big cheesy grin directed Nate’s way. He reached the bench where they’d left their towels and water bottles at the start of the session, because his body worked perfectly, the unfathomable asshole. He had Nate’s water bottle held out for him as he came into reach. “As long as you take ‘caffeine and sugar’ as being values of ‘spring water’. Sorry, kid. Doc Liu doesn’t want you on any stims just yet. No matter how delicious they are.”

“Which explains why the hospital food is the hospitaliest food that ever was. I’m _so_ glad I was technically unconscious for the entire detox period.” He took a drink, and then another, and then a third, because his body was as completely unsympathetic as his trainer when it came to the unsatisfactory nature of water sans additives.

“The way I understand it, even unconscious you were something of a beast about it.” His grin was unfair. And familiar, in some fuzzy way. But mostly unfair. “Gave the med staff quite a few scares. I think Merce is still holding a grudge.”

“Which might explain the quality of the -- ew. What the --” It took him a moment to connect the red smear on the surface of his bottle to his own hand. “I -- this is weird.” 

“You should get someone to look at that,” J.M. said, a little furrow appearing between his brows. “Looks painful.”

“It’s… not?” The sensation was distant, a faint stinging, even as he watched the blood well up through the scraped and scuffed skin. “Look, I was _not_ the sort to skin my knees climbing trees and stuff like that but this seems a little… off.”

“Again, I say you should get someone to look at that.” J.M. drained the rest of his bottle and, crumpling it, tossed it dead into the open recycler box from ten feet. “We were almost done anyway. Let’s get you at least bandaged up, and you can go to Medical from there.”

“Okay.” Nate dropped his own mostly-empty bottle in the recycler and followed, trying not to be immoderately grossed out by the sight of his own blood and failing pretty spectacularly.

“I forgot to tell you,” J.M. said as he unpacked the first aid kit from the wall, laying out cleansing wipes and alcohol pads and gauze and tape. He took Nate’s injured hand and wet it down with saline, then began cleaning the scrapes. “Today is our last session. Renard will be your therapist from here out.”

Nate could tell that J.M. was being careful, probably gentle even, but he rather thought somebody holding his hand should still _feel_ like something other than a vague sense of pressure, the saline and wipes more than a faint stinging. “Why’s that?” A ragged nervous breath. “Not that I don’t like Renard, but, uh, well I’m pretty sure they decanted him from his vat like maybe a month ago and he hasn’t really learned how to pretend to be human yet.”

J.M. grinned in high amusement and taped the ends of the gauze down to the neat field wrap he’d applied to Nate’s hand. “I’m not full time PT. In fact, I only do this kind of work when I need to get to know the kind of person my husband’s decided to adopt,” he replied. “Plus I think someone with more specialized training needs to be with you going forward, and I gotta get back to my other job.”

“Well, that’s a pretty good reason and _wait_ , who the fuck is your _husband?”_

The grin got bigger. “Smart as a whip, but not as fast, as Ma would say. I believe you met him shortly before your coma. He made you an offer?”

“Oh my _God. OH MY GOD.”_ It was only _Jack Fucking Morrison’s_ grip on his hand that prevented him from recoiling all the way into his next incarnation. “ _You’re the fucking head of Overwatch AND YOU HAVE SEEN ME IN MY UNDERWEAR.”_

“Sooner or later, you see everyone in their underwear in this line of work, kid.” He rose, held down a hand to help Nate stand. “It stops being weird eventually.”

“ _STOP TRYING TO HELP._ ”

**oOoOoOo**

Seventy-some hours and all the imaginable tests later, and Nate had at least half an answer to one mystery: connectivity issues between the cybernetics and the sensory strip of the parietal lobe, issues that waxed and waned in severity as the medical team made adjustments, finally managed to stabilize his sensory inputs -- touch, pain, temperature -- at 60% of normal. Which was, he was forced to admit, a lot better than 100% of abnormal, or nothing at all. The PT team developed a regimen to help him avoid hurting himself without realizing it, overdoing physical exertion without realizing it, or otherwise causing himself bodily harm without noticing it, thanks to his highly attenuated awareness of pain. 

Nothing really helped with the dulled and distant sense of touch -- which, he supposed, didn’t really matter anyway, since he wasn’t there to feel anybody or be felt himself and if he missed little social cues like someone’s fingers resting a little too long to be casual on his own or brushing up close or laying a hand on his shoulder while he was working, well, that was better all the way around for everyone. 

It wasn’t like he was there because he’d been recruited from some territorial government agency or military organization or sniped out from under some multinational, “adopted” or not. If he had, the spine wouldn’t have included failsafe measures to immobilize him for collection if he went outside the defined bounds of his live/work space in the first place. Drinks and dinner off-base with the stupidly hot cowboy or the crazy-hyper pixie with the accent who was going through the preflight prep regimen for the test pilot program or anyone else for that matter wasn’t even worth thinking about. He had a job to do. 

The job got easier when the initial build for his cyberneural interface armor, codenamed Tartarus, was finished. With his spine and brain attuned to it, he didn’t need to rely on his wonky fingers to adequately judge pressure, even on holokeys, and he could just _think_ his way through it, the way he could before the destruction of his original implants, the damage to his spine and brain, only faster, sharper, better. 

It was consolation of a kind. Better consolation arrived, nine weeks later, when he received updated meds allowances and found himself once more permitted the sweet, ambrosial stimulants he had been denied thus far. 

The base commissary was, as always, bustling first thing in the morning as hordes of personnel flowed in and out for their first couple hundred calories of the day, Nate cheerfully anonymous among them as he slipped in line for his first cup of coffee in the best part of a year, collected and adulterated to his preferences and carried off to one of the less-trafficked corners, at one of the tables without a view over Lake Geneva. Part of him knew he should probably be _eating_ something with this, but he could just imagine what his PT team would have to say about him trying to navigate the crush around the bagels and lox or the omelette station while jittering on a high-key caffeine/sugar rush and decided he didn’t need to give himself that lecture.

“You look like my kind of people with the way you’re making love to that cup of coffee,” said a voice, light and feminine, unexpected because _no one_ ever talked to him in the commissary except the cowboy or the pixie, and that voice was neither of them. “Mind if I sit?”

Nate looked up, surprised to see a small but gorgeous Asian woman with brightly purple hair beaming at him, and before his brain could catch up and pull the reins, his mouth said, “Surely. It’s a madhouse out there today.”

The woman settled across from him, setting her tray with its own extra large steaming cup of miracle potion down before seating herself and smiling sunnily at him as her fingers tore into a croissant dripping with honey. “Wait til they introduce McSandwiches in the fall. You think this is bad? Come armed if you want to eat.”

“Wow, they’re really doing that? I thought it was just a rumor.” He sipped, eyed her over the top of his mug, and then extended his hand. “Nate Tsujimura, Analysis Division.”

She took his hand, shook it and held on for an extra second longer than strictly necessary. “We’ve met,” she said with a smile that hit him square in the lungs like an unstoppably cheerful force of nature. “I’m Beth Liu, from Med. You might not remember me, though. It was just before your surgery. You have no idea how happy I am to see you up and around. How’re you feeling?”

“Better than I was.” A wry smile curled the corners of his mouth and he hid the expression behind the rim of his cup before it could turn bitter. “Thank you for helping me get up and about again and not throwing me in the lake.”

“Too much paperwork,” she said, eyes sparkling, and he realized abruptly he had no idea how long her hand had been covering his free one, but he sure as hell noticed it when her implants glowed and pinged his general biofeed data with medical authorization overrides. “But I might think it’s worth doing if you don’t stop lying to me like a lying thing, Nathaniel. How’re you _really_ doing?”

It was all he could do not to inhale his mouthful, which would have been a tragic waste of good coffee. “...I’m going to guess you’re a _doctor_ with Medical. And, honestly, it’s all right there. I’m okay. Self-care regimen working as intended. Haven’t burnt or bruised myself unintentionally in weeks.”

She blinked, then blanched, then frowned very fiercely. “Oh no,” she said, shaking her head vehemently enough that her ponytail whipped back and forth behind her shoulders. “No, that’s definitely not good enough. I can do a lot better for you than just _not burning your fingers,_ I promise.”

Nate blinked slowly at her. “I’m pretty sure it’s good enough?”

“I’m definitely sure it’s not.” Her mouth set itself into a single line, resolute and determined. “Finish your coffee and come with me to Medical. I have some ideas I can try to fix your sensory problems.”

He pulled out his own tablet, discovered his schedule cleared until after lunch and therefore all his excuses neatly stop-thrust and replied, “Well. Okay, then. But I understand it’s a thing related to the damage caused by-- by-- by the thing that happened to my original implants.”

“Says who?” She arched an eyebrow his way. “I’m seriously asking. Who told you that? Couldn’t have been Angie. … Was it?”

“No, uhm.” He attempted innocence. “I maybe sort of read my own files while I was waiting for --”

“Oh good!” She smiled brightly at him. “You have a medical degree! Excellent! I love meeting colleagues!” Her head tilted and the other eyebrow quirked at him. “Where did you study?”

“That’s sarcasm. You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you?” Nate drained off the last of his coffee.

“Yes.” Her eyes softened, and so did her smile. “Life should be enjoyed, not just tolerated. At least let me see what’s going on for myself? Maybe realign some settings?”

“Okay.” He closed his eyes against the stupid and pointless prickling of tears and nodded. “Can’t hurt to look, right?” There’d been a lot of looking, but he suspected she knew that already. “I apologize in advance for the state of my ports, I’ve spent a lot of time jacked into the Tartarus rig in the last couple days.”

“I can fix that too,” she said gently, and drained the remainder of her own coffee with quick gulps. The grin returned full force then. “C’mon. Let me show you my lair. If you’re very nice, I’ll show you the schematics for your first planned upgrades. I think I’m gonna call it Icebreaker 2.0, after you.”

He managed, just barely, not to freeze in place right there. “You. It was _you._ You _built_ my _spine._ ”

She blinked at him, then actually blushed a little, glanced away. “Yes? I mean, there was a whole team and a lot of paperwork, my god, you wouldn’t believe how much paperwork. Mostly I was in charge of anything written. Schematics, budgets. Dr. Winston actually _built_ it, if you want to get technical. I just designed it. Prototyped it. Installed the finished product. I didn’t build _your_ specific spine. But yes. It was me. You didn’t know?”

“No, I… Well. I met everybody but it was kind of a blur. Mostly it’s been the PT and post-surgical care teams.” He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. “I’m just one person, after all.”

“In your defense, I’ve been away for the last two months.” Wryly. “Finishing field certification. But I’m back, and I can fix you. Cross my heart.”

**oOoOoOo**

_Green Sky Gardens Co-Operative Arcology, 2076_

Beth paused the holovid playback of Gabe’s simulated nanocloud rebuilding itself with new code when the crick in her back wouldn’t go away. It was just getting to the really interesting bits, where she’d get to see if these new adjustments would go the way she coded them to go, and she didn’t want to miss it because she had to stretch her spine.

She cleared the space she needed while the holovid waited patiently, spread out the thin black yoga mat she’d gotten at Zenyatta’s insistence and began the opening asana of the regimen he’d developed to help her manage the stiffness and pain involved with owning a cyber spine. Said spine flexed and rolled with barely a twinge, just the way she’d developed it to roll, but the muscles and ligaments and bones attached to it weren’t so flawless and protested mightily in screaming nerves and rapid exhaustion. 

She examined the dim and scheduled-to-be-offline nanoports glowing in her palm with a critical eye as she took a brief water break. At least she’d never developed the sensory issues Nate had with Icebreaker 1.0. _One blessing, anyway._

She returned to her next set of asanas, transitioning from cow to cat and up into warrior, groaning pitifully as her arm trembled at the apex of the stretch, distinctly noodle-like in tensile strength. _Maybe Zen is right and I should think about putting together a team to upgrade me again._

_Even if Nate is going to kill me._

Maybe she could twist the truth a little and say it was for his benefit. It wouldn’t be an actual lie, because it was true. He needed upgrades almost as badly as she did. 

The comm chimed, the tone the one she had assigned to general medical staff, jarring her out of her train of thought. She paused, then said, “Put whoever it is through, Psyche.” She returned to the next asana in the movement, limbs already shaky and positions getting harder to smoothly transition between. 

Five left. She could do this. Even if it killed her. 

She gave up after the next, butterfly pose, just as Psyche finished patching her caller through.

“Dr. Liu.” The sweetly modulated tones of her technical second-in-command filled the room. “I wished to inform you that I have completed the medical records review of our current staff and also that I have been observing a number of troubling spikes in the biotelemetry of the Director of Medical Services.”

“Spying on me again, Zen?” She couldn’t help the grin that spread over her face and she let it stay. She straightened, reached for her water bottle again, and took another break. “I don’t see Rover anywhere around here. How’re you doing it?”

“Not at all.” Serenely. “And Rover is linked to your specific biorhythms -- he alerted me when he remote-detected signs of distress.”

“The tattle-taling little thing. I should revoke his nuzzles. I’m _stretching,”_ she informed him, and drained her water bottle. “Like I’m supposed to stretch on orders of the Director of Whole Being Wellness. It _hurts_ .” A pause, as she considered. “I made it to _baddha konasana_ this time,” she added, only a little grudgingly. “Personal best.”

“Excellent. I am _very_ pleased.” One day, she’d figure out how he made his voice sound _actually warm._ “Would you like me to bring you painkillers? Or perhaps the massage table?”

She was going to kiss him when she saw him next, professionalisms and inorganic physiologies be damned. “Both would be gratefully accepted,” she said, only a little whiny. “I’m still going through the simulations we ran on Commander Reyes’ stabilization codes.”

“I shall be there shortly -- we can go over the data together, if you wish.” The comm whispered shut.

She briefly considered finishing the remaining asanas, but decided against it for reasons that were definitely not _because she didn’t want to._ Instead, she told herself, _truthfully,_ that she shouldn’t overdo it and sank with relief into her comfortably ergonomic desk chair again. 

The data still waited for her, mid shift. She centered herself with a brief closing of her eyes and a breathing exercise, then hit play and watched the cloud cascade begin, quickly hooked into observing the intricacies of the repair algorithms as they interacted with the jacked and hacked cyberneural protocols currently installed in the good Commander’s body. All looked nominal, until the program tried to overwrite the altered code with the source code and stalled, like an engine turning wheels that wouldn’t move. 

“Goddammit,” she sighed, and set it to replay, her focus now on figuring out where she’d miscoded, or where Nate hadn’t accounted for the thirty something percent of Gabe’s body that was still technically authentic human. She promised the commander a lack of pain, and she was determined to deliver on it no matter what it ended up costing. 

The door tone chimed and the door itself slid open without waiting for her response, Zenyatta pausing in the threshold to bow from the neck in greeting. “I presume that matters have not progressed as desired.”

“Not entirely,” she grumped, waving him in while still peering at the suspect lines with one eye squinted. “It successfully de-authorized Moira as top tier admin in Gabe’s OS, restored pseudopituitary functionality, and then got hung up on replacing the altered acclimation protocol. It’s _my protocol._ I should be able to _fix this.”_ She repressed the growl, but not the grimace. “This is _vexing.”_

“And the pain you are in cannot be helping your concentration.” Gently, as behind her he began laying out his tools -- the centimeters thick hover-table capable of holding someone six times her mass and ten inches taller, a selection of other implements, towels, a couple stray, unmatched sheets.

“Who me? I run on spite and caffeine, you know that.” Knowing she wasn’t going to get any further with the code with the temptation of Zenyatta’s magic hands almost palpable in the air behind her, she set it to run another simulation, altered slightly to collect more detailed data on the specific cascade reaction mucking up her efforts, and turned to face him. “I don’t know what I’d do without you anymore,” she said, rising to her feet and peeling her shirt over her head. She stepped out of her jeans and placed them neatly on the chair, then did the same with her undergarments. Body shyness with Zenyatta had long disappeared, and she walked without shame towards the table. “I’m kinda losing interest in finding out too.”

He helped her up onto the table, draped the top sheet over her lower body. “I am honored.” A smile lurked in the corners of his voice as he handed her a bottle of freshly-mixed electrolyte drink. “Sip -- painkillers by mouth or intramuscular injection?”

“I’ll leave that call to you. I haven’t eaten much beyond trail mix this afternoon, so my stomach might not like oral meds.” She propped herself on her elbows and used the helpfully-provided straw instead of further straining her muscles by trying to drink from the rim in this awkward position. “Yum. Tastes like a pina colada. You made this by hand, didn’t you? It’s too good to be a bottle mix.”

“Yes. I was given the recipe by a colleague.” A hiss of antiseptic spray and then the gentlest of injector pricks, relief washing through her as the analgesic took effect. “I have been told it is much more pleasant than commercially available beverages. You--” His tone turned mildly chastising. “--have been overdoing it.”

She groaned and sank into the thin pillow afforded her by the massage table, all but melting as the relief from the painkillers spread across her nerves in a warm wash that stole her energy and her air, blocking the signals long enough for her to truly _feel_ how tired and cranky her entire back was with her. “Guilty,” she said, breathless and honest, because there was no point in dissembling or lying. “But there’s only one of me, and not enough of everyone else.”

“And yet you are still reluctant to delegate responsibility to the assistants that you _do_ have, or to the colleagues that, while not medically trained, may still take on some of the technical burden.” His hands were warm and impossibly gentle on the knots tying up her neck and shoulders. “I, for example, can do more. As can Nathaniel. He has said as much, more than once.”

_If he sees half the data I have, he’ll know what I did to myself._ The thought sparked across her synapses, through the bond Rover — the orb that attached itself to her every time she and Zenyatta were physically present in the same room — enabled between them. “You’re not —ooh, _god_ — you’re not wrong,” she said, closing her eyes and letting the massage table mattress support her while her limbs jellyfished onto it under the pressure of Zenyatta’s digits. “Just like you’re not wrong about me needing a complete overhaul.”

“Would it be so terrible for Nathaniel to know the extent of your cybernetic modifications? Forgive me, Bethany -- but he does not seem the sort to find fault, given his own.” Gently. 

Her eyes closed, and her shoulders tightened despite Zenyatta’s gentle, compassionate touch. “It’s not _that_ I’m rigged,” she said quietly, after a long silence. “It’s _why_ I’m rigged that I worry about him discovering.” She turned her face, to rest her cheek on her wrists, and sighed softly. “I got hit by a really nasty IED while I was shielding a patient in the field. It fried my central nervous system. They almost had to use the Avatar protocols on me just to get me home. Nate will think it’s his fault I was there to _get_ hurt in the first place.” 

It hurt to think about. Hurt to talk about. But somehow, this time, the hurt was _good._ Like healing hurt. The aches as bruises faded. The faint pangs of scars as they shrank. A throb of pain that signalled release of anguish. A beat, then: “I don’t blame him, but he wouldn’t be _wrong_ , and I don’t want to do that to him.”

“Perhaps,” Zenyatta said delicately, and resumed his ministrations on her dorsal muscles, “it would do you some good to talk about it?”

“Maybe.” She didn’t want to think about that either, but in the end, there was no one she could trust more than Zenyatta with knowledge of her person. He would probably be the best choice to know more about her history. She thought about it and thought about it, while he wrung moan after moan of pained and pleasured relief from her throat, and soothed her jangly nervous system into something akin to smooth purring. 

“Probably,” she conceded when he paused to let her take a drink of her electrolytic supplement fluid, and sighed through her nose as she sat up to do just that. “Okay. So I met Genji the day they brought him in, just before he finally consented to let us save his life…”

**oOoOoOo**

_Watchpoint Geneva, 2064_

_For Beth, this is how it begins:_

Twenty-six hours into the surgery, Beth felt someone watching her. She was one of a dozen medical professionals, technically second-chairing Angie herself as she worked her miracles for the badly damaged soul on the table between them, but all eyes were on the monitors, the tools or the body itself. She even glanced up at the observation deck jutting out with glass and steel and the myriad faces of those watching this part of the procedure above their heads, but their eyes were not on her either. 

She shook it off and turned back to the nerve-wire housing she was delicately implanting in the patient’s brain, with the hope that it would replace and repair his damaged nervous system in order to allow the prosthetics he would need to function as limbs. The sensation refused to go away, prickled with unease along her shoulders and roused the anxiety from the base of her spine until it screamed in both temples and rattled her rib cage. 

She made the last connection and the housing lights lit up, interfacing with his brain in exactly the way it was designed to. Before she pulled away, she pulsed the implant with her own medical codes and ran through a quick syscheck and bootup, and got green on all counts. Satisfied, Beth let her hands carefully withdraw. “I’m done,” she said, deftly finding a place in the general surgical chatter to insert the statement, and stepped away to let her assistant, Neil, take her place for closing. “Need me for anything else?”

Angie spared her a quick glance, mouth invisible beneath the surgical mask, but eyes crinkled warmly at the corners above it. “No,” she said, and returned her gaze to the work her hands were engaged in performing. “Not tonight. Another hour, perhaps two, and I will be closing myself.” She glanced up again, smiled with her eyes, and looked away once more. “Good work today, Dr. Liu. Get some sleep. We will reassess tomorrow.”

She scrubbed out with much less energy than she’d scrubbed in. By the time she shed her gown and stuffed it into the bin for cleaning, the sleep debt had started catching up with her. She slumped over the sink, listlessly washing her hands while she hummed her scrubbing-out song, shaking the excess water off them. As she reached for the towel to dry them off, the sensation of being watched returned in a huge swell of panic, and she jerked her head up, eyes wide, to find the source. 

She screamed when she saw the bearded dragon floating in the mirror, staring at her with hostile and smoky acid green eyes. She flailed backwards and tripped over the laundry bin, and hit the floor in a tangle of laundry and limbs. She scrambled to her feet, heart pounding and breath gasping, as she looked at the mirror again. 

The dragon was gone. The only face in the mirror was her own, wide eyed and pale and smudged with weariness from lack of rest. She squeezed her eyes shut, forced herself to take several long, deep, slow breaths, and told herself she just needed sleep. That’s all. Just sleep. 

“Y’okay, Bets?”

She jumped out of her skin and shrieked as she whirled, straight into the very well defined chest of resident and unfairly hot cowboy Jesse McCree. His hands came up to catch her, and she sagged into his grip, rubbing her face and groaning. 

“You look like ten miles of muddy hell,” Jesse remarked, and set her firmly on her feet, but kept a hand hovering to steady her as she swayed. “Scratch that. Twenty miles. Anything I can do for you?”

“Naw, Jess. I’ll be okay.” She found him a smile and gave it to him, hoping it wasn’t as thin and wan as it felt on her face. “Just a long couple of days.” She scrubbed her face briskly again. “What’re you doing down here this hour of the night?”

“ _Jefe_ wants me to keep an eye on the new arrival,” he said, and returned to her that stupid-hot lopsided smile he was so good at. “What can you tell me?”

“Not a lot,” she replied. “He’s pretty messed up. I wouldn’t expect him to wake up for at least a week. They’re considering Project Avatar.” 

Jesse’s eyebrows both shot into his hairline. “That bad?”

“That bad.” She sighed and stifled a yawn. “Look, if you’re on a mission from Reyes, that’s a thing that you need to do. Angie says it’s gonna be another hour or so before she’s finished, but the observation lounge is open.”

“Think I could prolly make that work.” Jesse’s grin was broad, tinged with a hint of … flirtation? _Naw, couldn’t be._ “Unless you need an escort back to your quarters?”

Tempting. Oh so very tempting. Instead: “I’m okay. I’ll manage.” She stepped backwards, out of his way, and smiled wryly. “Good night, Jess.”

“G’night, Bets,” he replied, and let her pass.

It was a fraught journey through the corridors and hallways to her assigned quarters, several floors west and up from the surgical suites. She kept seeing things in the corner of her eyes, green and glowing and angry, in reflective surfaces, things that vanished like smoke when she tried to look straight at them. By the time she found her own door and passed through it, she was as wrecked as if she’d spent double the time in surgery. 

She briefly considered a shower, but passed on it in favor of falling face-first onto her bunk. It took forever to actually fall asleep, because no matter how tired she was, every time she began to drift off, that dragon’s face would come back to her and jolt her awake again. 

By the time she finally managed to doze into an uneasy slumber, the artificial lighting had brightened the faux porthole to daylight levels, forcing her to burrow deeply into her pillows and blankets to chase consciousness away.

**oOoOoOo**

_Green Sky Gardens Co-Operative Arcology, 2076_

“Thank you for agreeing to join me, otōto.” Hanzo Shimada, formerly _kumichō_ of the Shimada-gumi, frequently one of the most highly sought-after assassins in the world, presently second-in-command of the recently reconstituted Blackwatch, dispensed a serene and benevolent smile on his younger brother. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”

“For values of ‘agreeing to meet’ that constitute being implacably hunted down, suffering malicious manhandling of my person, and being dragged by the ear to your quote, ‘outdoor office on the balcony’ where my only escape is a seventeen story drop, you’re welcome.” Genji, the little shit, grimaced sulkily at him. “My earlobes are delicate, ani.”

Hanzo snorted. “I told you not to pierce them six times but did you listen to me? No, you did not. Suffer the consequences.” He poured tea, Genji’s favorite, sweet with the scent and flavor of peaches and honey. “I do, in fact, only wish to talk.”

“Yes, and by your delivery method of your invitation, I’d say it’s an elder brother talk. There would have been handcuffs if you’d been my lieutenant coming to chastise me. And you’d confiscate my knife ankles.” He sat neatly _seiza_ and still managed to look like a long-suffering martyr as he reached for his cup. The asshole. “Most people use email. Or text.”

“Yes, if they want their personal affairs to become public knowledge. No computer system is completely impermeable, my brother, and spoken words have weight.” He whisked the lacquered covers off a series of trays, holding foods he knew Genji most enjoyed.

Genji’s eyes rolled, in the best way he suspected Genji knew to make every last older brother nerve he had _twang_ , and sighed. “This is not Hanamura, ani,” he said, and managed to sound quite maddeningly reasonable. “You yourself wrote large swaths of the security codes we now use here. A simple ‘hey bro, come have tea’ is not a state secret.”

Hanzo very deliberately lifted his own cup, inhaled the fragrant steam meditatively, and sent a silent thanks to whichever ancestor had sent the impulse to not bring a single edged weapon to this meeting. “True. But what we will be discussing here is _personal._ Now, drink your bloody tea.”

“Yes ani.” The sudden grin Genji gave him as he did just that marked a tally line in Genji’s column on the score chart at the back of his mind, and he tried not to let the aggravation do more than make his eyebrow briefly twitch. He was unsure how successful he was. “Not to change the topic or anything, but _what_ , exactly, are we here to discuss?”

“I am… concerned.” He set his cup down, caught his brother’s gaze and refused to relinquish it. “You have seemed unsettled recently -- more difficult to find, as a point of fact. Is everything well? Are _you_ well? If you require care that Dr. Liu cannot provide, tell me and we will find a physician who can meet your needs.”

Genji’s face assumed the shifty look Hanzo always associated with his younger brother attempting to locate and perfect a suitable lie that would not only quell Hanzo’s concerns/inquiries, but prevent future concerns or inquiries from coming his way. “I am uncertain as to what you mean when you say unsettled or difficult to find,” he hedged, and made impressive effort at _selling_ it. Unfortunately for him, Hanzo was not in the buying mood.

“Genji,” Hanzo reminded him gently, “when I found you, you were hiding in a supply closet with a case of Pocky, a six-pack of summer melon soda, four different hand-held game systems, and according to _Zenyatta_ you had been there for at _least three days._ What are you _hiding_ from?”

Genji’s shoulders slumped, and he hunched into his teacup, sipping sullenly. It didn’t seem like a get-under-Hanzo’s-skin kind of sullen. He remained silent, not even slurping his tea loudly in the quiet between them, as Hanzo half-expected him to do. Finally, he sighed, set down his teacup carefully and folded his hands in his lap, formally. When his head rose to meet Hanzo’s gaze, it was the most neutral, unreadable face he’d ever seen -- had once despaired of ever seeing -- on his brother’s face. “I did not wish to present Doctor Liu with any difficulty, discomfort, or reluctance to visit you during your convalescence, _oniisan_ ,” he said, calm and even and oh so very laced with deep tension. “I felt my continued presence in your flat would be a detriment to her house calls and thus removed myself before I could disrupt her life any further than I have already disrupted it.”

Hanzo regarded that non-expression, the line of his brother’s shoulders and of his mouth, equally tense, and reached out to take those folded hands between his own. “An honorable choice,” He murmured, carefully laying the approval into his tone. “And yet I am still concerned. Will you tell me what troubles you?”

The corner of Genji’s mouth trembled for a moment as he stared at Hanzo with suddenly pained eyes. “I do not think I should, for your sake.”

“For yours, my brother.” He reached up and brushed the hair away from Genji’s forehead. “I would not hide from one another any longer -- neither joy nor grief. Please?”

Genji’s eyes shuttered, closed, and the tension drained abruptly out of his shoulders. He slumped forward, forehead coming to rest on Hanzo’s shoulder. “ _Fuck,_ but you’re good at guilt trips,” he mumbled, and his arms came up to embrace him. “It involves… the aftermath of our … _disagreement_ , and the person I became back then…”


End file.
